Many of us are too young to have experienced the extreme counterculture of the 1960s, but we're all very familiar with one of its byproducts—Ken Kesey's groundbreaking novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. On the eve of the book's 35th anniversary, former Rolling Stone columnist Mark Christensen will bring the literary genius turned free-wheeling acid monger to life in a reading of his new biography Acid Christ.

Says Christensen, "It's likely that everything most people think they know about Ken Kesey is wrong." After the overnight success of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion, Kesey had joined the ranks of some of America's greatest writers but abandoned the literature scene to embark on a drug-fueled cross country road trip that became Tom Wolfe's inspiration for Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Through candid conversations with Kesey's closest friends and fellow pranksters weaved together with personal vignettes, Christensen has created both a biography and memoir that, in tandem, provides tremendous insight into one person and an entire generation.

See Christensen in person at the San Francisco Public Library on November 3 at 6:30 p.m. 100 Larkin St., acidchrist.com